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Friday, May 09, 2008

blood

Yesterday was our stake's blood drive. I usually sign up with Darik. I have a really hard time with needles and blood, but I try really hard just to not look at all - makes me queasy (you can only imagine my hysterics when I had to have blood draws every other day for IVF, yikes!). Well last time we tried to donate it was in the middle of the Taysha drama and my iron was too low and they said I needed to lower my stress levels and eat more meat. So 2+ months without Taysh I have no doubt my stress level is way down :-) so we go in yesterday again to donate. Once again my iron is too low!! Shnikeys, what is wrong with me?! It's just one or two percent above being anemic (30%) and I have to have 38% to donate. Next time I'm grilling steaks every day before I go for a week. Anyway, I had to sit around and wait for Darik to finish. Usually they have us in and out of there pretty fast but this time it was taking forever! So I run home to grab a book and when I get back they're just setting Darik up. I wanted to take a picture of me drawing blood but since that photo-op was unavailable I settled for Darik. :-) Here he is, he doesn't get queasy with blood at all, and it's a good thing. When he was done the nurse went to remove the tubing and the needle and she messed something up and the needle came off of the tube and I look up and see blood squirting before she stopped the end of the tube - and her gloves were ALL bloody and I looked down and blood was puddling on the floor. I stood up and walked out of there as fast as I could. It's one thing to have blood be in tubes and bags and easy to ignore -- but puddling and smearing is something I can't handle. Grody. Anyway, later that night Ellie sat on his shoulders and gave him a scalp massage to help make up for it. Not that he was bothered at all by it, just me. He told me when he figured what was going on he asked the nurses if I had passed out -- they just said, "No, but she ran out into the hall pretty quick". I was glad I could provide them some entertainment, at least!